Eli Mandel (December 3, 1922 – September 3, 1992) was a Canadian poet, editor of many Canadian anthologies, and literary academic. Biography Eli Mandel died in relative obscurity. A series of strokes had left him unable to write and, as a result, Mandel had receded from public view long before his death. He was born Elias Wolf Mandel in Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada to Russian Jewish parents who had emigrated from the Ukraine, and grew up the Canadian prairies during the Great Depression. After a job working for a pharmacist who, landed him a position serving in Canada's Medical Corps during World War II, it has been said Mandel returned a forever emotionally distraught man who was destined to live the rest of his life without a sense of belonging. This helps explain the alienation that is illustrated throughout his writings. He studied English at the University of Saskatchewan attaining a Master of Arts degree in 1950. He received a PhD from the University of Toronto in 1957. From 1953 to 1957, Mandel taught at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean. Later, he taught English and creative writing at the University of Alberta, University of Victoria, University of Toronto, and York University. He also taught Canadian studies at the University of Calgary. Besides his poetry, he wrote other critical works such as his 1969 essay on fellow poet Irving Layton. He was married to his first wife, Miriam Mandel, for 18 years. The couple had two children, Evie and Charles. In 1967 they divorced and he married Ann Hardy. They had one child, Sara. Publishing poetry in the early 1950s, Eli Mandel's first significant collection was entitled Minotaur poems (1954), and it appeared in the contact press anthology Trio (1954). His poetry was published in 1954 in Trio, an anthology of poems by Mandel, Gael Turnbull, and Phyllis Webb published by Raymond Souster's Contact Press. His first book was Fuseli poems (1960). His works seem to have been deeply influenced by World War II, especially all the horrors of the Jewish concentration camps. Despite the lack of direct references to the war until Stony Plain (1973), his work illustrates many grim and morbid images of despair, destruction written with a tone of inescapable pessimism. Mandel's style was contemplative and intellectual - "an ironic poet, rather than an angry one". The lack of emotion heightens a hopeless outlook, a central feature in all